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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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IMO there's a valid take that looks like this that I sometimes embrace: Kulturkampf is fundamentally bike-shedding and the narcissism of small differences writ-large. The things we spend so much time and effort arguing about are, at the end of the day, fairly trivial issues on the grand scale of geopolitics and human endeavor. We're discussing whether divine preordination and free will can coexist First Amendment creative freedom weights against civil rights accommodation law require expressions the creator may disagree with, or about the impacts of marginal changes to tax policy.

Those aren’t necessarily trivial issues though. Free speech is a fundamental right, and the ability to say what you want to say — and to be allowed to be heard — are critical in any sort of democracy. If I cannot say what I believe to be true, then there’s no possibility of debate, reason, or compromise. If I’m compelled to speak, it’s the same thing, dissenters are forced into participating in things they find odious and thus the ability to be creative in service to your own ideas is compromised because the state wishes to force me to say things I don’t believe.